Embrace Your Art- February

DAY 29: LEAP

The idea behind this sketch was the desire to create and produce something tangible. Most of my sketches don't really have the colors red and orange, so I decided to use them to represent "newness" and the idea of going into areas I haven't gone before. As I was sketching, the red background reminded me of a tweed jacket, and so the rest of the shapes started to remind me of a brooch. My dream is to hopefully create things that I can eventually sell. It's been a dream of mine for the past few years, but never pusued because I felt inadequate. Hopefully I can see each day as an opportunity to grow and learn rather than feel the pressure to "arrive."

DAY 28: BLISS

Bliss was a hard concept for me. I don't really know what I think about when I read the word bliss. I just saw colors and movement, so today's sketch just reflects the "feeling" that I felt when I think about bliss.

DAY 27: GROW

This sketch was something more literal. I thought about a plant and sketched different colored petals to represent growth.

DAY 26: MAGIC

This was a hard idea for me. I just started sketching to see what would end up on the page. The sketch for this prompt resembles what I drew for DAY 1. It's been interesting to see these similar styles come back up from past sketches.

DAY 25: SAFE

When I think about safety, I think about a home. Today's sketch is a view a person may see from the inside of their home.

DAY 24: DETAIL

When I thought about detail, I thought about knitting. Here, is a sketch that is inspired by a knitted scarf.

DAY 23: STRUCTURE

For this prompt, I was reminded that anything that is built needs structure. Today's sketch resembles a tent.

DAY 22: FEAR

I tried drawing a cliff and below is a sea of creativity. Sometimes we're afraid to dive in and explore our creativity but if we don't jump, we don't know what we're missing. I think the fear is that we don't believe we can produce anything good. Many times, I don't want to try because I already anticipate the failure, so as a result, I self sabotage myself. I just need to dive in and explore. It's not about impressing others by what I can do, but rather what I can find/cultivate to contribute to our world.

DAY 21: DREAM

Usually, my dreams confuse me rather than captivate me. I drew random shapes to symbolize the abstract visions I have in my dreams at night.

DAY 20: PRECIOUS

For this prompt, I was thinking back to DAY 17. I like the idea of drawing a nest. Probably because lately I've been thinking about starting a family soon, so the idea of "nesting" is something precious to me. Even though the sketch didn't turn out how I wanted it to, the thought behind it was something special.

DAY 19: THEME

For this sketch, I was thinking about how the theme of life is that there is light shining through the darkness. I think every person understands that life is hard, and a lot of times, unfair and unforunate. Yet, in the midst of the pain, there is hope. Whatever we put our hope in will reveal itself in times our deepest need. In our pain and struggles we have to challenge if what we strive for and hope in really sustains us in our weakness.

DAY 18: PAST

I had fun with this concept. I thought about the page as being someone's timeline and the colors were experiences that affected a person's life. The varying lengths are to show the longevity of someone's experience carrying through/affecting their life.

DAY 17: NURTURE

In the beginning, I just drew a circle in the middle and started expanding the circle. When I thought about nurture, I thought about the idea of life. Life nurtures in order for it to thrive. At first when I was expanding the circle, I reminded me of an atom, but later, it started looking more like a nest. I was happy with how it turned out. the outer edges looked very wispy and organic, which is a texture I haven't done with colored pencils.

DAY 16: DEPTH

When I thought about depth, I thought about the depths of the sea and how there's folds upon folds of different currents/movement in the water. Afterwards, I realized this sketch is similar to my DAY 2 sketch!

DAY 15: BALANCE

In relflecting on what balance means to me, I was thinking about the difference between a balanced life vs. an unbalanced life. The right side represents a "balanced" life, where as the left side represents the reality. I assumed if I were to look at my life, I would find areas that were out of balance.

DAY 14: GIFT

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, love is truly a gift. I sketched my page to look like ribbon you would put on a gift.

DAY 13: OPEN

At first, I thought about a literal door so I started to draw the outline of a door. When I started digging deeper into the concept of "openess," I thought about the word, "vulnerability." When we begin experiencing another person's vulnability, we begin to see their world and the "colors" that make up the depths of their heart.

DAY 12: SPACE

I was inspired with the recent news of science finding gravitational waves in outter space. In today's sketch, I drew a series of boxes being pulled by gravity to sink to the bottom of the page.

DAY 11: PERPECTIVE

This sketch was really fun for me. When I thought about "perspective," I thought about how life is full of little pockets of surprises. The streaks of colors represent the element of surprise. Plus, I think I really enjoyed the end result because as a whole, the streaks of colors remind me of enoki mushrooms--which I love mushrooms (fun fact).

DAY 10: TIME

When I think about time, I usually get really anxious. It goes by so quickly, I'm starting to feel the urgency to make the most of the time that I do have. Lately I've been trying to focus on the present moment. I want to remember how I feel in the now, rather than go day by day going through the motions. The first thought that came to mind when I thought about the concept of time was a gradient. The color starts with blue, but gradually changes to green- to signify time passing by, but not knowing it has until a "new color" was taken its place.

DAY 9: TEXTURE

When I thought about texture, I thought about feathers and fish scales. This day's sketch is my take on creating texture through using different amounts of pressure with each stroke.

DAY 8: MEMORY

I thought back to my wedding 3 years ago. This picture a "close up" of the shoes I made for my wedding. They were blue flats with a lace detail.

DAY 7: COMPOSITION

I didn't really know what to do for this prompt. I was out of ideas, but started drawing anyways. This is an example of me just showing up, and seeing what would unfold.

DAY 6: COMFORT

When I thought about comfort, I thought about a knitted sweater. Here I attempted to sketch something that resembled a knitted pattern. Then erased the lines to make them more distressed...like a sweater that has been worn over and over again.

DAY 5: SHADOW

I asked myself, "if a shadow had eyes, what would it see?" If a shadow is an silhouette of an object, then it would see the true object that it reflected. I imagined a shadow seeing "authentic self." For today's sketch, I was trying to convey the evidence of the inner self, coming into sight.

DAY 4: LIGHT

For this prompt, I thought about how light and darkness conflicted with each other. This sketch was just what I imagined in my mind if light and darkness collided.

DAY 3: MUSIC

My major in college was music, so I really geeked out on this prompt. I imagined my blank page representing silence and what sound would look like if I saw it move throughout a room. The most important part when playing music is how the piece ends. Not only do you want your emsemble to end together, but also taper your last note together- leaving nothing but a clean reverb echoing throughout the room. Here, I've sketched a visual on how a piece of music is to end-the final melodic flourishes that meets together then tapers the sound back into silence.

DAY 2: PLACE

Today I sketched in my favorite place. My bed! My bed has always been a place of comfort. I use to do my homework in my bed while I was in college because studying in a library always made me feel tense and anxious. I stuck with cool colors because the cloudy Seattle weather always casts a cool tone in my room. This sketch represents the layers and folds of the blankets that I love being underneath on a cold day.

DAY 1: ROOT

Limitations: colored pencils for 10 minutes a day.

I struggled for a few minutes on what to draw. I kept on thinking about a carrot, but I wanted to do something not as literal. When I thought about the concept of a root, I thought about how the fibers intertwined with one another as they grow. Other words that started to come to mind were "connection" and "relationship." I started drawing random dots and gave each dot a "partner" of the same color close by. Afterwards, I started to connect the dots by extending a line across the page and seeing what other dots/colors would intersect with each other.